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Title
Declining Into Silence:
The Language of the Workingman
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ARTS
LITERARY HONOURS THESIS
DENNIS MCINTOSH
STUDENT NUMBER 3513168
SUPERVISOR DR IAN SYSON
OCTOBER 2003
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
THESIS A 8 2 0 . 9 3 5 2 6 2 3 MAC I
xcCR^ &¥A THESIS A820.9352623 MACI 30001008559793 Mcintosh, Dennis Declining into silence : the language of the workingman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
University has given meaning and understanding to my life. The completion of this thesis
brings to a conclusion five years of study as a mature-age student. These have been the
best five years of my life. Thank you, Ian (Syson), for encouraging me to get an
education when I was 40 years of age. Thank you to all my lecturers and tutors for your
passion and your care.
John McLaren, Nathan Hollier and Ian Syson particularly, have given me intellectual and
emotional support in writing this thesis and in my Honours year. It has been a privilege
for me to be part of your lives. Thank you.
I would like to acknowledge, Nicole, Rhiannon, Paul, Elizabeth, Daniel, Anne, Joy and
Geoff for your support. To Tracey Rolfe my Editing tutor, your efforts have had a
profound effect on my life. Thank you. Thank you also to my long-time friend and
mentor Ricky, who has always given encouragement.
I would like to dedicate this thesis to the shearers, roustabouts, wool pressors, farm hands,
tractor drivers, truck drivers, roller drivers, backhoe drivers, pipe-layers, road makers,
Tunnellers, tradesmen, TAs, factory hands, roofers and construction labourers I have
worked with for many years. I hope I have represented your working-class experiences
authentically, and highlighted the richness and the struggle in a man's working life.
Disclaimer
This thesis is my own work. All academic publications used have been referenced and
acknowledged.
PREFACE
In the battle of Culloden in 1745 most of one generation of my male ancestors were either
slain during the battle or beheaded afterwards by the British army. This last stand of the
Jacobite uprising, (defending independence against England), failed, ending forever the
clan system of the Scottish Highlanders. The Scottish clearances followed, making
refugees of the remaining people. The Highlanders along with slaves, serfs and itinerant
peasants were herded into the lowlands and collared and forced into the emerging
workforce that was fuelling the bourgeoning Industrial Revolution. The industrialisation
of work and the rise of the capitalist brought a new class of people into existence: the
working class. In 1838, two generations after Culloden, Daniel Mcintosh survived the
Chartist dispute in the Scottish mills. Once again the British Army was involved,
shooting at the men on the picket line. The solidarity of the men, formed through work,
held firm in the face of extreme danger. This thesis is about the descendants from the
original working class. It is also about that bond amongst men at work in the blue-
collared working class in contemporary society.
According to E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English working Class, 250 years
ago employers outlined miners as turbulent, passionate and rude. Mike Donaldson in
1991 in, Times of Our lives, says little has changed in employers' views on working-
class men since then.
CONTENTS
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s p2
D i s c l a i m e r p3
P r e f a c e p.4
C o n t e n t p.5
I n t r o d u c t i o n p.6
M a s c u l i n i t y : A B r i e f H i s to ry p. 13
T h e Pos i t i ona l F a m i l y a n d the L a n g u a g e p.22
M e n G o to W o r k p 28
A f t e r W o r k M e n G o H o m e p.37
W h e n M e n A r e Y o u n g p. 47
W h e n M e n A r e O l d p. 53
C o n c l u s i o n p. 56
B i b l i o g r a p h y p. 59
Hypothesis
In examining working-class masculinity in the industrial novel this thesis discusses the
proposition that work is the seminal influence in the structuring of men's feelings and
how those feelings are communicated.
Introduction
Working class men experience and express intimacy through work and in relationships
with other men at work, using coded silences termed 'paralanguage'. Paralanguage is a
linguistic term for non-verbal intonations and gestures. At times, workingmen suffer in a
different silence at home. This thesis, through examining selected blue-collar male
characters in three industrial narratives, investigates the environments that influence the
make up of working-class men. It also shows how workingmen, armed with these
influences—their tool kit of social skills—negotiate life.
A brief history of masculinity:
Chapter One explores the social evolution and the personal development of blue-collar
working-class men. It covers the historical shifts from the industrial revolution to
contemporary society. It also deals with Freud's Oedipal complex in childhood, through
the teenage years of school, and into the subjugation of the adult working male. This
chapter further looks at the tension between work and capital and the subsequent
structure of families and communities in society.
The positional family and the language in the Working Class
Chapter Two covers the use of language based on social groupings within families. I
draw heavily on Basil Bernstein's research in Class Codes and Control. Social structures
formed by the labour market produce two main types of families: the working-class and
the middle-class family. The social family structure and the linguistic structures within a
family are intimately related. The working-class family has a structure that is termed
'positional' and is identified by, among other markers, a public language that does not
have an individual language to express personal feelings. The middle-class family
produces a 'person'-orientated structure, identified in part by an individual language that
allows the expression of personal feelings.
Mirra Komarovsky in Blue Collar Marriage links familial structures to language
structures in adult male blue-collar familial relationships. Komarovsky's research is an
insight into the positional family social make up. The limited social role the male worker
plays outside work; his need for space, his nonverbal communication and the feelings of
alienation in working men within the family are evident in her work. Komarovsky's
work supports the linguists: Bernstein, Huspek and Labov. Although Labov and Huspek
disagree with aspects of Bernstein's linguistic analysis of working-class language, they
all agree that the linguistic structures are based on class.
Men go to work
Chapter Three covers the analysis of certain male characters in literary fiction. The
literature chosen shows the intimacies shared through coded silences amongst men at
work. It also shows how these codes are structured. The silences at work are compared to
the silences in the family home. Silences in the home have a very different role, a
different meaning and come from a different emotional state. The characters discussed
are from Gavin Casey's 'Short Shift Saturday', Mena Calthorpe's The Dyehouse and
Betty Collins's The Copper Crucible.
Gavin Casey grew up around the Kalgoorlie mines in Western Australia. 'Short Shift
Saturday', published in 1942, is written out of his personal experiences. Jack Beasley in
Red Letter Days wrote that Casey had only a quarter of a lung left from the damage done
working in the mines. This realist narrative is about the relationships at work (often
termed mateship), the hardship and dangers of a miner's life, and the difficulties of
married life in a goldmining town. Bill is the main protagonist. It is through his working-
class coded expressions that I view his feelings and thoughts, his intimate and alienated
relationships at work and at home.
Young Bill's hero worship of his father's project is an example of how linguistic codes
and concepts of masculinity are passed on to the next generation. The development from
the hero worship scenario to a hopeless outcome for the son in the father/son relationship
is graphically portrayed in Mace's relationship with his son. Mace is an old miner who is
dying with emphysema from mine dust. His son, Dick, replaces Mace in the mine when
Mace becomes too ill to work.
The Dyehouse written in 1961 by Mena Calthorpe is also a realist narrative. The story is
about working-class culture and life. Hughie, one of the characters finds his intimacy in
his work. He takes pride in the dyeing tradition of the factory. The irony in Hughie's life
arises from the coupling of the joy and intimacy he receives from his work with the
destructive consequences of his working life on his family and his relationships with
other people. Work narrows his experience of life and his ability to express himself.
Hughie is retrenched as a result of an ideological shift in industry. The industrial
transition represented in the book is from employee responsibility for control over
production to a centralised management system. Industry outgrows Hughie's skills and he
subsequently kills himself
After work, men go home
Chapter Four investigates men's silences at home. Betty Collins, part of the realist
writers' movement, first published The Copper Crucible in 1966 as a social realist novel.
The original version was heavily edited on legal advice. The University of Queensland
press republished it in 1996.The later edition has restored the book closer to the original
manuscript.(I have used the restored 1996 edition in this thesis).The story is set in the
North Queensland town of Mt Irene, which is a pseudonym for Mt Isa. Collins's novel,
covers issues such as, class, industrial conflict, gender, ethnic differences, and
relationships. Julie an 'Australian' marries Nick a Greek immigrant. Nick is the
carpenter's union representative and secretary of the local union council. The mine
management blackbanned Nick because of his success as a union representative. His
ability to bring disparate groups together, strengthening the men's position in
negotiations with the mine, threatens the mine management. Nick like Hughie, is
struggling against the humiliation of impending unemployment
Hughie's communication at home is similar to Bill's in 'Short Shift Saturday', limited
and frustrating to the people around him. The silences at home, expressed in different
ways by Hughie and Bill, show the lack of communication that operates in their family
homes.
When men are young Chapter Five shows how young working class men communicate better than older
working class men. In 'Short Shift Saturday' young Bill's family position is an example
of how language structure and linguistic grooming takes place around the kitchen table in
a working class culture. Later, reproducing an aspect of his father's life, he builds a play
mine in the backyard. This idolisation of his father in childhood later becomes a noose
around the neck of the young working class male and is an important theme and cycle of
masculine production.
The hopeless consequences of Dick's relationship with his father Mace, mentioned
earlier, is a caricature of many relationships. Dick, as a character, has no dialogue. We do
not know how he thinks and feels.
10
Oliver is a young itinerant worker who provides resistance to the Dyehouse
management's attempts at dominating the workers. His character both represents and
offers a socialist critique of working-class culture and politics. Oliver, armed with his
insights into capitalism, the poverty trap of marriage, and the futility of factory life
without an education, defies his own logic, falls in love, and willingly accepts his bleak
future. In my analysis Oliver's character represents Hughie and the other men's youthful
past. Oliver also shows that when relationships and love enter the lives of working-class
men they transform work and masculinity, through a process of romanticisation.
When men are old
Chapter Six covers the alienation of the main character experience when they get older.
This experience is supported and well documented in Komarovsky's Blue Collar
Marriage. The men's own reflections expose the deteriorated communication skills of
older men compared to those of younger men. This chapter also looks at the romantic
notions of work and relationships in the young characters—Oliver, young Bill and
Dick—as representation of the older characters' lost youth. A comparison of the naivety
of the older characters when they were young and of the younger characters with the
disappointment of their later years suggests the demise of working-class men.
Conclusion
By exploring the literary characters in these working-class narratives I hope to shed some
light on the complexity of the emotional life of working men. As a consequence of work
shaping men's feelings, and the communication structure that expresses those feelings.
11
men become progressively alienated and isolated in familial relationships. Workingmen
often feel trapped, inadequate and misunderstood. The workplace is the central influence
in a workingman's life. It determines the structural nature of his language and his family.
12
Masculinity: A Brief History
The industrial revolution created a new society based on class and the gendered division
of labour. Gender and familial relationships, education and the notions of work were
revolutionised and new masculinities emerged in this period.
According to Connell, Freud was the first person to make an in-depth analysis of
masculinity. Freud's research theorised that the young male child experienced a psychic
division from the mother when difference is recognised by the child. He termed this onset
of masculinity the 'Oedipus complex', which according to Connell is 'the emotional
tangle of early childhood involving desire for one parent and hatred of the other as the
key moment in this development for boys ... rivalry with the father and a fear of
castration' (1995 p.8). 'The key point is not the fear o f . . . mutilation by his father, but the
threat of the loss of sexual identity' (1983, p.26). At this point of development the
feminine becomes the 'other' in the young male's world.
Freud claimed neurosis is a material phenomenon—a consequence of the social pressure
the advance of civilisation puts on the person (Connell 1983). Marcuse on Freud in Eros
and Civilisation 'pointed out that Freud failed to distinguish the "level" of repression
needed to sustain human society per se, from the level needed to sustain a system of
social domination where one class controls and exploits another' (Connell, 1983 p.l 1). It
is feasible that the physical experiences of a materialist culture, brought on by the
industrial revolution, and the psychological responses to that culture are inseparable.
13
The young working class male identifies socially, culturally and linguistically with his
father. Pauly (1984) suggests in Time of Our Lives, that 'the family household may also
be an institution through which class-consciousness is nurtured and transmitted' (p.22).
It is also the time in working-class culture when the self is emotionally wrapped around
the construction of blue-collar masculinity. To shift from this rigid structure of imposed
masculinity is to shift from a sexual identity, leaving only the unacceptable feminine as
the 'other' construction of self This can give rise to homophobic attitudes and
exaggerated masculinities when confronted with those constructed as effeminate men and
the softer feelings of love that can arise with girls.
Industrialisation replaced the feudal and clan system of Europe and the village life of
England. New masculinities were formed during a period of rapid change. The peasants,
villagers and serfs from agriculture and the rural sector, became the new craftsman,
tradesmen, unionist and itinerant workers in manufacturing and consequently urban
living (Connell 1995, p. 190). Global markets dominated production needs, replacing the
production levels required for local market forces. The social shifts caused by
industrialisation impacted negatively on the subordinate classes. The proletarians, after
leaving the land, became the modern wage labourers who, having no means of producing,
were reduced to selling their labour power in order to live (Marx and Engels,1848).
Jane Austen's novels (works such as Emma and Pride and Prejudice) represent the
Gentry's domestic authority over women (Connell 1995, p. 190). This period also depicts
ruling class masculinity as closely linked to the state through 'administration, which
14
ordered evictions, the lash, transportation and hangings in a largely agricultural culture.
The Gentry also made up the bulk of the military officers' (Connell 1995, p. 190). This
type of masculinity was transformed into the businessmen and entrepreneurs that Mathew
Arnold in Culture and Anarchy described as the forces of materialism and American
vulgarity.
Emile Zola's Germinal offers a contrast to Austen's depiction of gender relations.
Written in 1874 Germinal depicts life in the French mines, with men and women working
together. The young female character, Catherine, works in the mine side by side with the
men, as do most of the young women. At home one of the older women cooks and cleans
for several families. Gender relationships of shared duties are carried over from their
rural culture, differing from the gentry's culture where the division of labour is
determined by gender.
Women were part of the original workforce in the textile factories, mining,
printing and steel work of the industrial revolution. The expulsion of
women from heavy industry was ... a key process in the formation of
working class masculinity ... drawing on the bourgeois ideology of
separate spheres. (Connell 1995, p. 196)
The prevention in the 19'^ century of women from working in heavy industry or
participating in educational pursuits was achieved through the use of a scientific doctrine
of innate sex difference (Connell 1983, p.21). The womb and the intelligence of women
15
were seen to be too delicate to cope with heavy work or the rigors of intellectual pursuits.
The expulsion of women from the mines was supported by the male-dominated trade
unions. This impacted on gender relations in working-class families by creating power
relationships, which gave in most cases, control of the family income to men. The ruling
class's gender relations, marked by the division of labour between husband and wife,
were imposed onto and mimicked by the working class. Thus masculinity was further
isolated and more narrowly and rigidly defined through work.
At the same time, the rise of the Protestant ethic, which included individual wealth
creation supported by a new autonomous self, with its unmediated relationship with God
(Connell 1995, p. 186), suggested prosperity was a sign of godliness. The bourgeoisie,
while taking the high moral ground over the 'unruly and provincial working class', had
no regard for past traditions and institutions and was accompanied by an emerging
materialism. This new order and new cultural practice deeply concerned and distressed
the English critic and essayist Matthew Arnold.
Abandoning religion as the traditional process of providing hope and meaning in life,
Arnold attempted, through literature and education, to emancipate the working class who
he thought were in need of salvation. Despite his considerable efforts at bringing 'the best
that has been thought and written' to the working class, real education eluded a
substantial number of working-class people. Today the limited achievements in education
by the working class are a signifying social code that frames part of the psyche of
working-class masculinity.
16
With masculinity defined as a 'character structure marked by rationality and Western
Civilisation defined as the bearer of reason' a cultural link was forged between patriarchy
and empire. The rise of the logic of the gendered accumulation of industrial capital and
the power relationship of empire (Connell 1995, p. 187,191) completed the transformation
of a pre-industrial masculinity into the modern construction of masculinities.
'When we were kids we thought the steel mill was i t . . . we thought they were it, strong
men. We couldn't wait to get into there'(Donaldson 1991, p.8). In this extract from an
interview with Steve Dubi in Donaldson's book, Time of Our Lives, Dubi reminisces
about his childhood around the steel mill and his fascination with the men's ethos. Hard,
high-production, dirty work is men's work. Donaldson goes on to suggest the toughness
of the work and the worker can demonstrate masculinity. Connell claims in Masculinities,
that work is one of the organised institutions that produce masculinity. The production of
a hegemonic masculinity is the result. Cobb & Sennett in The Hidden Injuries of Class
comment that at work, a thousand men all follow the rules complete the educational
requirements, but only one becomes the boss. This practice injures the 999 other men
who didn't get the job.
When a group of men build a structure, a feeling of solidarity can occur. However,
industries can create a workforce that becomes invisible, to the management, to higher
profile workers and to society. The job a man does for several years may only take a few
days to learn, leaving the worker thinking and feeling he is unintelligent and only capable
17
of the menial tasks assigned him. Work under these circumstances is a destructive force
in a man's life, affecting his self-perception. The one person selected for the boss's job
escapes manual labour and a feeling of failure.
'How does a labouring man face the day, the week, the rest of his working life once in the
pit of simple failure' (p.9). This is an extract from an interview in Time of Our Lives
where Donaldson recalls his own experience of work. Working-class masculinity has as
its underbelly a feeling of failure. According to Cobb and Sennett and Donaldson, this
feeling of failure is learnt from working-class schools.
The onset of failure for most is perceived early in working-class schools,
and with it comes a resistance on the part of some children that provokes
the sort of ridicule and discipline by teachers that will become a
permanent feature of life at work, where its agents instead will be
supervisory staff and middle management. (Donaldson 1991, p.9).
Feelings of failure are a code and part of the development that structures masculinity
within working-class culture. 'If you don't like me you can go and get stuffed'. 'The
authority structure of the school becomes the antagonist against which one's masculinity
is cut' (Connell 1989 in Donaldson 1991 p.9). Smoking, drinking, dope, sex,
pornography and truancy define rebellious actions. These demonstrate 'rejection and
hostility ... for school' (p.9).
The politics within masculinity are relations of alliances, dominance and subordination
constructed through practices that exclude and include that intimidate and exploit
(Connell 1995, p.37). In my own work experience I witnessed the gun shearer carry more
weight at a union meeting than the poorly skilled shearer. This politics is expressed
through subtle nuances and a paralanguage within working-class culture. Gang rapes, gay
bashing and misogynistic behaviour are an overt reaction and exhibit the severest
elements of rage and anger. This behaviour is not limited to the working class, neither is
it common—our justice system provides ample examples of middle class violence.
Matthew Arnold promoted the idea that the working class needed to be emancipated
through reading and learning the best that has been thought and known. (Arnold 'Intro').
However as Ian Syson's PhD thesis, 'Tracing the Making of Working Class Literature',
points out, there is only a thin body of work concerning blue-collar working lives. The
role literature plays in the middle classes-giving people a measured look at themselves
from a distance so they can evaluate their lives—is largely missing in blue-collar working
lives. Undealt with feelings of frustration often lead to violent and rebellious acts in
youth and, in turn, alienation and loneliness in older males.
Physical aggression is, Donaldson writes, a claim to adulthood and masculinity (p. 13).
Nathan Hollier also in his essay 'Frank Hardy and Australian Working Class
Masculinity' suggest that ' they [workingmen] are more likely to face threats of violence
and must therefore develop a personality that is prepared for and able to provide
aggression and violence'. But I regard this perceived aggression as part of a rites-of-
19
passage phase in young working-class boys. Tliis is not a matured, masculine character
trait. Workingmen can be caring, belong to volunteer organisations, make love to their
partners, care for their nieces and nephews and foster young workers and apprentices, and
many are involved in nurturing roles in junior sports programs. A day in the factory
leaves many men too tired and oppressed to want to show acts of aggression.
Donaldson goes on to say that foremen may use the threat of violence at work [to achieve
work levels] (p. 13). This supports Hollier's argument. However, this is an exaggerated,
misunderstood point in Donaldson's research. The ruling class imposes on the working
class social and cultural acts of violence that are personally removed, indirect, and
include the fundamental threat of retrenchments. Threats of aggression among the
working classes are codes in the politics within the culture of working-class masculinity.
Labourers, tradesmen, leading hands and foremen are in constant conflict at a political
level at work. But, simultaneously, they often have solidarity at an emotional level,
which is expressed through their language, as this thesis will show.
Many working-class men are part of a conservative, family-orientated culture. This is
evident in the structure of the coded paralanguage that comes from 'families and
extended families living near and with each other for generations' (Peckham; Gos 1995).
Both Geoff Goodfellow, a contemporary working class poet and author of Poems for a
Dead Father and Gavin Casey, in 'Short- Shift Saturday', display within their dialects,
the structure of feeling in this language. Raymond Williams in Culture and Society wrote
how feelings are structured by their village and schooling life and expressed through their
20
language. The solidarity of the working class is displayed through its codified language-
a code to which Arnold and some middle-class academics and social commentators lack
access.
21
The Positional Family and the Language
The emotional make up of workingmen is complex. Each stage of the working-class
male's development shapes how he feels and expresses those feelings. The son's
development (be strong and don't show feelings) mimics the father's emotional make up
through the need for sexual identity. The father's expression of his feelings and emotions
are heavily influenced by his relationships at work, where intimacies are often expressed
through silences. The expression of feelings in a working-class family is learnt through
linguistic codes. These codes produce a specialised form of communication, which can
lead, for young boys, to difficulties in mainstream education. Men's familial relationships
in marriage are also structured by these linguistic rules. Men's silences at home are often
codes of alienation, the reverse of silences at work.
Different family structures produce different types of communication. The linguistic
structures in a family, according to Basil Bernstein in Class Codes and Control, are either
positional (working-class) or personal (middle-class/professional). A person-orientated
language structure teaches the individual to express thoughts and feelings. Conversely, a
person from the positional (working-class) family uses language to reinforce allegiance
and loyalty and to build inclusive relationships.
Positional families operate as teams with assigned roles, and communicate in more short
direct sentences in the form of demands rather than detailed explanations. The non-verbal
expression carries most of the meaning in the communication. This use of gesture, facial
expression, volume and tone of voice is termed by Bernstein as 'immediate or direct
22
expression'. The emphasis of the communication in direct expression is on the emotive
rather than the logical. Bernstein terms this a 'public language'. He argues that public
language uses nonverbal communication to express feelings, limiting the use of verbal
expression of feeling to positional families (p.32).
The public language in the positional family contains its own aesthetics and expression
but works through, to some extent, undemocratic, hierarchical power relationships
between parent and child and older and younger siblings. Public language tends to
emphasise 'things rather than processes'. The authority of the statement, 'because I tell
you', from a parent to a child, expresses the closed form of the social relationship with
the sub text of solidarity non-verbally expressed, rather than in the 'reasoned principles'
of middle-class families (Bernstein 1971, p. 44-5).
The connection between language and family is an important consideration when
regarding education. Education is centred on middle-class, person-orientated language
structures, and school is a central place of socialising. The working-class family with its
closed, nonverbal language is not well positioned to benefit from the education system
because of the different language structures.
The working class boy is often genuinely puzzled by the need to acquire
vocabulary or use words in a way that is, for him, peculiar. It is important
to realize that his difficulties in ordering a sentence and connecting
sentences ... are alien to the way he perceives and reacts to his immediate
23
environment.. . sensitivity to content rather than structure of objects,
applies equally to the structure of a sentence (Bernstein 1971, p.35).
Bernstein is correct in his assumptions about positional families' language structures not
being conducive to mainstream education. However, Bernstein seems to miss some of the
finer points within the working-class closed language code. People communicate their
thoughts and feelings through their paralanguage, verbally and nonverbally, and through
their idioms and colloquialism in writing. William Labov in Language in the Inner City.
A Study of Inner City Black Language argues that working-class language has planning,
structure and variety in its utterances (p.222). The well-documented, high drop-out rate of
working-class children from higher education suggests that school is not a positive place
for their socialising.
Education 'works hand in hand with the State to produce leaders differentiated from
workers' (Campbell 1996).The academic opportunity for working-class children is often
lost in the socialising process occurring in the formative years of the family unit and
reinforced in the socialising process of school. Michael Huspek in 'Oppositional Versus
Reproductive Codes' argues against the suggestion that working-class children do not
resist their limited role in the educational process. Huspek argues that there is a 'two-
directional flow of power within the social class system' (1995). On the other hand, in
'Codes Oppositional, Reproductive and Deficit: A Case of Red Herrings', Bernstein
claims that working-class children are not prepared for resistance and struggle. The
options open to children in a position-orientated family are rebellion, withdrawal or
24
acceptance (p. 156). It could be argued that boys are overtly prepared for resistance.
Educating working-class boys is a growing problem, especially when we are in, arguably,
a post-industrial society that is marked by diminished employment opportunities. Despite
the limited work options for young working-class boys it appears a strong resistance to
education remains in many. Yet some working-class boys embrace education as a way
out of poverty, powerlessness and manual work.
Working-class children find their public language limits their potential for a full
education. They use their language to consolidate relationships, and the authoritarian
style of parenting leaves them (arguably) vulnerable to performing work dutifully and
conforming willingly to an employer. These emotional strictures limit the options for a
child born to a working-class family.
The working-class masculinity that inhibits expressiveness in childhood often develops
into flawed expressiveness in adulthood. Childhood and adolescence are times when
feelings are not named. Mirra Komarovsky in Blue Collar Marriage explains, the
inhibited child says 'I shouldn't', and on becoming an adult says, 'I can't—talk about
such things' (when trying to express feelings) (p. 156). Tough language is often used
when expressing the tenderness of love, and about relationships with girlfriends.
Expression of his feelings is regarded as antisocial behaviour that potentially isolates the
young working-class male from his mates (Bernstein 1971, p.48). Often boys do not have
or are not competent in the language required to express their feelings.
In adult males' deficiency in the skills of communication, especially in ... less educated
husbands ... hinders the sharing of experience' (Komarovsky 1967, p. 156). Rather, men
25
experience sharing nonverbally. The structure of masculinity continues, from the
socialising of the family through coded language, into the behaviour of men in the social
roles performed in a marriage and family.
Marriage for young working-class people often means an escape from an unhappy home.
Not surprisingly, the highest percentage of unhappy marriages is found in the poorer
families (Komarovsky 1967, p.290). For some men, marriage is where he can be the boss.
For others, marriage bolsters a low self-esteem (Donaldson 1991). Negative forces often
drive the decisions that are made under this duress. In an attempt to escape their own
misery they paradoxically recreate the next generation's misery.
Mrs G, in Komarovsky's research, states that when her husband gets upset or depressed
she uses a few passive strategies like: 'Leave him alone; let him sweat it out at work; a
few beers with his mates when he can afford it' (p.l56).Mr G said the best way his wife
could help was to 'keep out of my way' (p. 129). Men don't want to come home and talk
about their boring job with their partners. Home is a sanctuary, a place separate from the
oppression of work. Nonverbal communication within marriage is not always negative.
Specialised patterns of sharing, which don't require extensive communication (p. 177) or
perceived close companionship, can create deep emotional ties.
The research by Komarovsky in Blue Collar Marriage suggests most workingmen don't
find emotional relief in marriage. Rather, they rely on the male friendships outside the
family home to fulfil their needs. Over many years, for a variety of reasons, these male
26
relationships that at one time assisted in sustaining emotional connection disappear.
Blue-collar marriages could be seen as the last place of the traditional male dominance of
women; however, the power within a low-status blue-collar marriage is often matriarchal.
The male in his twilight years often descends into isolation within the family. Most
fathers are excluded from the politics between the mother and child, and the intimacy in
the lives of their married children (p.257).
27
Men Go to Work
The perception of working class males to people outside the culture is primarily based on
physiology (Segal 1990, p.66). Men think with their cocks, will fuck anything, drink too
much and are uncouth rednecks. Or they are stable, steady and rock solid, make good
fathers—you-know-where-you-stand-with-them types. Both of these interpretations
stereotype workingmen. The working-class male remains an enigma emotionally.
Joseph Pleck in The Myth of Masculinity makes the revelation :
We are no wiser about the actual demands made on men, and certainly no
wiser about the emotional and political dynamics of masculinity—why the
majority of men not only endure their dysfunctional roles, but display
extraordinary resistance to change (Pleckl981, p 79).
Work is the missing link in understanding the structuring of a workingman's feelings.
Analysis of the coded silences at work helps explain how masculinity is structured. The
theory that the structure of men's feelings begins at work takes Marx's argument that our
'consciousness is determined by our social being' one step further. The theme of silences
is broken into four parts: men at work; men at home; older men; and young men.
The work site is seminal in structuring a workingman's feelings. The coded silences, the
nonverbal communications, of Bernstein's positional family structure become the
worker's tools of trade in communicating at work. The coded language between the men
28
expresses their intimacy with each other. The greater the danger the more reliant workers
are on their workmates for survival. Bill, the main character in Gavin Casey's 'Short-
Shift Saturday' shows that intimacy in the face of danger is a requirement for survival:
You're on a flimsy platform, with the machine trying to tear your wrists
off, and whenever you start bits of ground flake off, and fall on you.
You've got to keep an eye on it, and be out from under at times when the
bits weigh a couple of tons or so. Don wasn't in a careful mood and I was
concerned Don would be worse than careful.
I worked with an ear cocked ... We [Tom and Bill, who were working in
the next hole to Don] looked at each other and we each knew that the other
felt curious and afraid (Casey 1942, p. 213-14).
The unfortunate character, Don, failed his last medical examination at the gold mine. He
knows that means a life of unemployment with half pay and the likelihood of an early
death. Bill and Tom, his work mates, aware of his vulnerable state of mind, work with an
'ear cocked' listening for him. Bill knows intuitively how Don will be feeling and
responds sensitively, surrounded by the noise and busyness of work. Bill does not know
Don well outside the workplace but he says he is 'one he had a feeling for' (Casey 1942,
p.210). Bill's relationship with Don, a good example of the close relationships men can
develop at work, bears similarities to the relationship of Mr and Mrs King in
Komarovsky's Blue Collar Marriage. Komarovsky wrote 'what was shared was more
29
important for the feeling of intimacy than how much of one's life is shared' (p. 155 ). She
goes on to say that the emotional satisfaction in their relationship is there despite large
segments of the Kings' lives spent apart from one another.(While workers spend a lot of
time together, it is impersonal, restricted to the worksite and away from the family
home).
The satisfaction with communication and a sense of closeness do not,
apparently, require that the totality of one's experience be shared with the
mate. Such emotions may co-exist with a very specialised pattern of
sharing. (Komarovsky 1967, p.l77)
Workingmen have a specialised pattern of sharing exclusive to their workplace. When
Bill meets Don at the change of shift in the mine he yells out 'g'day'. Don having just
learnt of his fate remains silent. He looks back at Bill and at the same time the other men
are silent. Bill realises something is wrong and notices the tight skin around Don's face.
In this passage of communication at change of shift, no speech takes place. Later, Lofty,
another miner, calls Don a 'lucky cow' for getting out of the mine. This is a placeholder,
a filler to ease the intense raw feelings experienced by the men. Lofty lightens the mood
to a manageable level.
Later, on the 'plat', the men roll smokes, waiting for Don to come out of the mine. When
it is Bill and Tom who emerge instead of Don, the other men seem disappointed. Bill
seeing the disappointment on their faces says he knows how they feel and what they are
30
thinking (about Don's demise). So Bill and Tom join the men in rolling smokes. Rather
than sharing their feelings about the situation, the men sit together as each other in a
ritualistic act, creating shared feelings of solidarity. This form of deeply intimate
communication has its origins in working-class positional family structures, where
language creates solidarity and builds relationships as opposed to middle-class language
structures in person-orientated families, where members learn to express personal
feelings and thoughts.
When Don comes out from the mine and into the company of the other men, everyone is
relieved and laughs and becomes jovial. This reaction is a linguistic placeholder; the real
meaning of the conversation is conveyed through other channels (Gos 1995). Don looks
surprised and works out what is going on and 'looks grateful and ... miserable' (Casey
1942, p.214). The coded language is an exclusive language bound up in the mutual
experiences of the men. Looks, tone of voice, gestures and bullshit make it a well
understood but closed code. The real meaning of these exchanges is hidden from
outsiders. The character Hughie from the Dyehouse has a similar experience but in a very
different way.
To Hughie, dyeing is a noble trade that sets him apart from the other workers in the
dyehouse. This sense of identity is important in working class culture. Society often
groups working class people together as one identity. Convenience and ignorance are two
of the possible reasons for this. However, there is a lot of pride in the subtle differences
amongst men and their differences are heavily protected and defended. Men use a variety
31
of ways to construct difference in their masculinity. Craftsmanship is one way; another is
the way the miners in 'Short Shift Saturday' set themselves apart from other men through
their dangerous work. Hughie loves his work. He comes from a long line of traditional
dyers.
He had an eye for colour, and enjoyed the development of rich purples, of
new plumes, greens, crimsons and royal blues ... The understanding
seemed to be in his fingertips ... The skill and joy of the job lay in the
mixing of the dyes, the weighing-up, the measuring of the chemicals ...
Wondered whether the new youngsters being trained would ever feel the
way he felt about the colours.(Calthorpe 1961, p. 12-13)
Hughie has a historical relationship with the dyers of the past; the men who have gone
before him and taught him the trade are part of his daily relationships. 'Tommy Peters
and Old Perry', he remembers. 'The night he and Peters had worked back and got into
that new yellow' ( p. 46). The intense feelings Hughie invests into his work are
juxtaposed with the intense bullying to which his boss Renshaw subjects him.
Hughie felt used ... he felt no joy in getting up ... and felt sick and weak
... he knew he would say nothing to Renshaw when he came in ... meekly
accepting his sneers and the lash of his tongue ... he felt shame and misery
(Calthorpe 1961, p. 10-11).
32
Like Don in 'Short shift Saturday', Hughie does not have any coping mechanism beyond
throwing himself into his work. Hughie is not a talker. Oliver, the rebellious, itinerant
character, encourages Hughie to stand up for himself against Renshaw. Oliver asks
Hughie why does he 'bust his guts' for the firm when they treat him so badly. Hughie
responds by 'grinning weakly'. His answers are short and incomplete. He says, 'I been
here a long time.' He pauses, reminisces, and repeats, 'I been here a long time, 'and then
says, 'I like the dyein'(p.46). Hughie is a man under siege at work without an expressive
language. Komarovsky in Blue-Collar Marriage writes about the:
Trained incapacity to share ... about the men's inarticulateness. The ideal
of masculinity into which they were socialised inhibits expressiveness
both directly, with its emphasis on reserve and, indirectly, by identifying
personal interchanges with the feminine role. Childhood ... spent in an
environment in which feelings were not named, discussed or explained,
strengthens these inhibitions. (Komarovsky 1967, p. 156)
Understanding Hughie's experience of work is important to understand his feelings. This
'trained incapacity' to share stems from the same working-class position-oriented family
of the miners in 'Short Shift Saturday' with a paralanguage expressiveness. Hughie does
not articulate his thoughts or feelings verbally. He thinks only another dyer could
understand how he feels (p.65). Hughie finds himself frozen. He wants to talk but
everything he wants to say remains unsaid. He thinks there is no need to use the 'words
33
he had planned to say'(p.70). Casey's miners have each other to exchange glances with;
Hughie, on the other hand, is removed from the body of men.
Mayers is one of the workers to whom Hughie talks, albeit cautiously. Their relationship
reflects the complexity of working-class politics. It shows how the restricted code used in
sharing feelings exists within a politically fragile context. Hughie looks into Mayer's face
and he sees in it,' a combination of shrewdness and kindness. '(p.71) Mayers also 'knew
exactly how Hughie felt' by looking at his work. Both men know and understand each
other intimately. They have the shared knowledge of the coded silences of working-class
culture that operate unconsciously—but they are not close politically. Mayers is close to
Renshaw. Hughie asks Mayers if he has heard anything about his (Hughie's) impending
demotion or sacking. Mayers says he hasn't heard anything; that answer has a dual
significance. Mayers hasn't heard anything because Renshaw knows he might say
something to Hughie. Mayers, being close to Renshaw, should hear something of the
gossip that seeps out of the office. Mayers hearing nothing from Renshaw is a bad sign
for Hughie. This means Renshaw is keeping his plans to deal with Hughie a secret, and
the executions of his plans are underhanded. It also means Renshaw, while not privy to
the men's code, understands the silent solidarity amongst the men. Solidarity exists
between Mayers and Hughie even though they are political enemies. Both implicitly
understand and accept the reality of the ruthlessness between men in working-class life.
These coded silences that carry the intimacy amongst men within hostile political
situations show the different layers in relationships that exist in complex situations within
working-class culture.
34
The miners in The Copper Crucible have a similar complexity: 'The desire for a bigger
share gave them a rough unity' (p.25). At the same time a dozen men would take care,
risking the sack to get the Miners Voice, a roneoed political sheet, into the crib room for
the men to read at lunchtime. On another emotional level, the men look out for each other
when they are, drilling and blasting in the dark, with the noise drowning out
communication. Intimacy and care for one another in this environment is paramount for
survival. This reliance on each other is also evident in the miners in 'Short Shift
Saturday'. The more politically motivated men take responsibility to enlighten their
workmates despite a silence parading as lack of interest. The political differences within
factions of workers like the miners are complex. The men who are responsible for the
Miners Voice show a deep-seated knowledge of their fellow workers. The shared
knowledge workers have of each other transcends the silences in their lives.
Hughie becomes depressed and despondent after he is sacked and he kills himself The
narrowing effect work has on how Hughie expresses himself is a significant contribution
to his suicide. The value of the intimacy and expressiveness Hughie receives at work
overrides the abuse he is subjected to. Work is a place he feels at ease with his feelings
and where he works his problems out by busying himself As Komarovsky's Mrs King
says, the best way for her man to sort out his moods is to 'work it out' or 'have a drink
with his mates' (p. 176).
35
Hughie and Don, in their respective narratives, highlight the fear of specifically not
working, more than being unemployed. They also help to answer the question Pleck in
The Myth of Masculinity asks as to why men display an 'extraordinary resistance to
change'. A man's dependence on work, it would appear, is not only about money or a
purpose but also relationships and shared feelings of intimacy. The forms of
communication at work determine the boundaries of the expression of a man's emotional
life. Their expressiveness is determined simultaneously with the products of their labour.
As work determines class structure, it follows that class-consciousness determines the
structure of the family home. When the whistle blows at the end of the shift the man
leaves work and goes home to his family.
36
After Work, Men Go Home
The gendered division of labour masculinises men and feminises women. The distance in
this division is mirrored in the differences that exist between the discourses of the kitchen
and the crib room. Bill from 'Short Shift Saturday' leaves his mates and a hostile work
place and heads for his home and a hostile wife.
Marriage is a 'deal ' and can be a stratagem for low self-esteem for the blue-collar
working class. Bill provides some of the qualities that constitute 'the deal' in a working
class marriage: attain steady work, educate the children, provide a home, and keep free
from poverty (Kleinberg 1979, p.126). Annie, Bill 's wife, agrees to move to the mining
town because it can provide a home and good wages. While the money is good in the
mines, the high cost of living nullifies the benefits. Effectively poor wages and
unfulfilling work turn the unpaid housework from 'a refuge from the labour market to a
prison of unpaid labour' (Donaldson 1991, p.60). Annie finds that Bill 's excessive
drinking and her lack of social opportunities in the oppressive mining town contribute to
the unhappiness in their relationship.
The story starts at the breakfast table on Saturday morning. Bill, like all the men in the
mine, works a half shift on Saturdays. Annie says to Bill, 'What time will you be home?'
As Bill explains, she is not asking the question; rather she is challenging him on the time
he will be home. Bill knowingly infuriates her by responding with passive aggression in
saying, 'Oh, about the usual.' Bill and Annie 's communication is coded. What is said is
37
not what is meant. The real questions Annie asks are: 'Are you going to the pub? Will
you be drunk when you get home? How drunk will you be when you get home? How
long will I have to wait and try to keep your lunch hot?'
Bill's answer, 'Oh, the usual,' said in a casual way to infuriate Annie, is about power and
independence. He really means: I'll come home when I want to. No commitments, no
restraints and importantly no promises. The aggression and the casualness in their tones
conceal their feelings and subjugate these to a covert position. Bill and Annie's language
is used to build relationships; personal feelings are not expressed but are instead coded.
Bill and Annie communicate at an emotional level through their tone of voice,
concomitantly venting their rage while tentatively encroaching on each other's personal
space.
'She gets my back up the way she puts it,' Bill says of Annie. When their son, young Bill,
asks his dad if they can go into town when he gets home from work, Annie answers for
Bill, saying they can go, 'if he's capable'. Bill, hearing this response, is 'aching to smash
her'. He waits until young Bill finishes breakfast and leaves the kitchen before talking to
her. By that time Bill thinks, 'there didn't seem anyway to start on the matter'. Bill wants
to leave the house. He doesn't want an argument or to hit her. Instead he wants to 'get
out with other men—cobbers who took you as they found you and didn't want to change
you or alter your way of living to suit them' (p. 197-98).
38
Bill later feels guilty and then remorseful about how he acts (or fails to act) toward
Annie. This feeling lasts until he sees her, when the same resentful feelings re-emerge
and he wants to hurt her again. Bill is under pressure from external and internal forces.
The expectations placed upon a blue-collar worker are a burden for Bill. Workingmen
think that not showing hurt feelings, and toughing out bad situations for the good of his
family is supposed to honour him. But, in practice, repressing such feelings is a burden.
The frustrations of his incapacity to express himself leave Bill wanting to smash his wife,
walk out of the house and be silent.
The less educated man 'doesn' t find emotional relief in marriage' and will often
'withdraw psychologically or physically by such means as walking out of the house'.
(Komarovsky 1967, p. 193) Blue-collar husbands fear the feminine. They have a
masculinity that inhibits expression. This leaves workingmen ready to accept certain
deprivations, take the blame and suffer hurt feelings in silence (Komarovsky 1967,p.200).
Hughie 's relationship with his wife is different from Bill 's on a number of levels. Hughie
has fulfilled the criteria of a successful working-class husband: Alice has some financial
security, and they own their house. This gives Hughie and his wife a measure of social
capital in their street. Adding to that is the prestige Alice draws from Hughie 's stability in
his employment. His rise to a leading hand has given the impression to his neighbours'
think he might end up running the place one day (p.9).
39
Hughie 'was living a lie, only Hughie, lying beside Alice in the still dark of the morning,
knew the real story of his position at the dyehouse' (p.8). Alice, as opposed to Annie,
responds to her husband differently. She takes emotional responsibility for him: 'another
mother who will intuit his need, his fear, his loneliness' (Rubin 1985, p.64). When
Hughie comes home he seems to hide away from the pressures and oppression of work:
'In here with all the curtains veiling the windows and his armchair drawn up to the fire,
he could forget the Dyehouse' (p.9). Hughie finds solace in his home but he cannot be
reconciled to the fact he has lost his job. He cannot communicate to his wife how he
feels.
She was trying to whip him out of his apathy ... trying to jerk Hughie out
of his dark mood ... He sits there looking into space, pretending to read,
but usually just sitting ... seems sort of sick ... I need to be left alone ... I
want to be left alone to work things out for myself . . . (Calthorpe 1961, p.
84-86)
Hughie is trapped in his inability to communicate and his feelings of failure. 'Success for
a worker is determined by what he earns, what he owns, where, how and with whom he
lives and his ability to control his work environment' (Donaldson 1991, p.9). One of the
participants in Komarovsky's research on blue-collar masculine markers says, 'You don't
bring your problems from work home.' Hughie's problems are not mechanical or
practical. Men usually enjoy fixing things. Hughie's emotional life is expressed in mood
swings and unexpressed anger.
40
The expectation that a man starts full-time work after leaving school and remains a
breadwinner until retirement has precipitated rising levels of'breadwinner suicides'
(Donaldson 1991, p. 66; Pleck in Segal 1990, p.293). Segal suggests men cannot abandon
the breadwinner role. If they do, they lose one of the few places they are able to feel
intimacy. Not only does Hughie have the 'trained incapacity to share' but also he needs to
be left alone like the couples researched in Blue Collar Marriage:
Leave him alone because if I try to get him to talk he'll get really sore, or
he'll go off the deep end and walk out . . . He is strictly hands off if
something is hurting him (Komarovsky, 1961, p. 157).
Hughie is withdrawn from his wife—as cautious men may be in order to avoid the
emotional demands put on them. His working and home lives are two separate worlds.
Hughie appears to be the type of husband 'who did not find emotional relief in social
interaction', which further retards his communication skills. (Komarovsky 1967, p . l60-
190). When Hughie goes back to the factory to kill himself, he completes the castration
began with his being discarded from his job.
An important aspect of The Copper Crucible is Julie's relationship with Nick during a
time when he cannot gain regular employment. Nick's work circumstances are different
from Hughie's or Bill's. Hughie, before being sacked, has thirty-five years in the one job
and appears to be an introvert. For Bill survival at work and at home consume his life.
41
Nick is an extrovert, wlio revels in union advocacy and struggles against constant
unemployment. Hughie and Nick are in similar emotional turmoil as a result of unstable
and unfavourable employment prospects. Hughie operates in nonverbal coded silences.
Nick's silences, like Bill's in 'Short shift Saturday', come out in his paralanguage. Often
what is said is not what is meant.
Nick is silent about the corroding support for him from the men, the struggle to gain
employment, the hurt he feels at being sacked regularly and the humiliation of not being a
good breadwinner. Nick's feelings of failure, his despondency about his venture to Mt
Irene, his marriage problems and the difficulty he has finding his place in his new country
are heavy emotional burdens. Despite these difficulties rarely are Nick's feelings
expressed—instead we get emotional rhetorical outbursts.
Nick finds himself battling for odd jobs—'eight jobs in quick succession'— and
watching the money disappear (p.68). Nick is systematically excluded from employment
in Mt Irene because of his union activities. His blacklisting by the mine destroys his
hopes of owning his own home and his dream of a happy family in his new country
(p.l60).The intricate work relationships evident in the discourses of the other narratives
are missing in Nick's communication with other workers, despite his finding some
solidarity with fellow migrants building his house.
Nick's problems at work put increasing pressure on his relationship to Julie. She
comments that Nick has changed since they have been at Mt Irene. She says 'Nick has
42
reverted to type' (traditional Greek) (p.68). 'He wasn't like this when they met, fell in
love and had a baby' (p. 109). He starts by demanding her wages and then restricting her
spending. If she argues, he savagely pushes her away(p. l l3) . He refuses to help around
the house. When she doesn't cope with paid work and child rearing she is forced to resign
to care for the family. He tells her that as a consequence of her decision she has to serve
him around the house (p.l 14). Julie says Nick has become arrogant (p. 146). He often
becomes angry and irritable and at one stage slaps her. Julie feels she is turning into a
doormat. She feels that the boss exploits Nick so he in turn exploits her (p. 168). Finally
they separate after Julie breaks down under the strain.
Understanding what Julie means in saying Nick has 'reverted to type' is complex. Nick is
reverting to a stereotype of his masculine gender. The feminine acts as the 'other' in the
male's gender construction. This originates from the male child's need for a sexual
identity, in the Oedipal separation phase. The 'authoritarian family', Connell explains, 'is
the site of where the reproduction of class society and patriarchy is accomplished' (1995,
p.17). Bernstein's linguistic positional family and Connell's sociological authoritarian
family are the same family viewed from different academic disciplines. Language in this
family is used to consolidate relationships rather than express personal feelings. Julie
could only fail to meet Nick's irrational and excessive demands. The authoritarian family
is controlled by the solidarity required in the language. Julie is disloyal and breaks the
solidarity in the family by not conforming to his wishes. Nick and Julie's relationship
breakdown shows the intense pressure a working-class family is subjected to when a
man, living in a hegemonic culture, finds his working life under constant threat.
43
Nick's need to dominate Julie is a need to re-establish his masculinity. Nick is under
attack as are all the other blue-collar workingmen in all of the stories covered in this
thesis. Most of the markers that identify a man as successful within working-class culture
are being threatened. These markers include control over his working life, freedom from
poverty, security, and home ownership. Home ownership is significant on several levels:
it is a defence against predatory landlords, 'a symbol of success, a sign of being a good
provider and a good money manager'(Kleinberg 1979, p. 124). Nick, importantly, is
distant from regular workmates, who could provide much of the intimacy that sustains a
man in his life. He cannot show his considerable skill as a worker or his honoured and
respected physical abilities at work. Nick's ability to unite both Australians and migrant
workers makes him a threat with the mine owners. Subsequently he is a threat to the other
men's incomes, and the animosity his presence causes in the other workers undermines
his advocacy skills as a union delegate.
Nick's communication at a union level is in a different register from his communication
with Julie. At work he communicates in a more formal language, speaking effectively to
the group about group experiences and formal negotiations. At home Nick doesn't
communicate personal feelings to Julie. There is a void in his communication at home
surrounding his problems. Nick never addresses the effects of his black banning by the
mine. Instead, he blames Julie for being an unsupportive wife. Nick's lack of expression
of personal feelings is consistent with a positional (working-class) family language
structure. Nick's constant and insidious blaming of Julie suggests he is lashing out at the
44
person closest to him, and that he really blames himself for his perceived failure. This
attitude of workingmen blaming themselves is a common theme in both Donaldson's and
Komarovsky's analysis of working people. (Donaldson 1991, p.9, Komarovsky 1967).
The mine owners marginalize Nick and fragment his work and work places. His
masculinity comes under attack and he becomes the 'other' in his environment, an
outcast, and a liability to the other men's earning capacity. Capitalism encourages the
gendered division of labour and the workplace replicates this division by evaluating
men's masculinity. Work gangs do not want weaklings, incompetents, novices, bludgers,
troublemakers or the elderly in their team. Men do not want to carry another man on their
shift; nor do they want their day to be any harder. Sometimes the better the work-gang
the better the bonus money. The resulting hierarchy of masculinity tends to feminise
those men perceived as inferior.
Nick's difficulties in getting work are overseered by the employer but the men feminise
Nick. Defenceless against the unacceptable, Nick 'reverts to type' at home as a survival
skill. He is without the avenue of work as a creative outlet, the shared intimacy through
the experience of work, and the action of work where men find relief from stress rather
than the use of words (Komarovsky 1967, p. 198).
The male protagonists in all of the narratives discussed here avoid speaking about the
painful subjects that are at the core of their marital relationships. In a time when these
men need emotional support from their partners, their personal relationships are at their
45
most distant, and the men's feelings of failure retard rather than encourage
communication. 'The wider the gulf—segregation of roles, disparity of interest—between
the sexes, the more difficult it is to empathize with the daily frustrations of the other.'
Workingmen think it takes someone working with them to understand them
(Komarovsky 1967, p. 171,188, 192, 202). Komarovsky's research found that when the
environment was favourable for men to express their emotional needs, the sexes become
more alike in the demands they place upon communication
46
When Men Are Young
Young working-class men communicate outside work better than do older working-class
men. Young men are yet to have their feelings and expression structured and restricted by
and for work. They are, however, preconditioned to the work environment. The father as
role model and the coded language used in the family prepare the young working-class
male for the workplace.
Within the warmth of his parents' love, around the security of the kitchen table, young
Bill in 'Short-Shift Saturday' is unsuspectingly being made for the factory floor or the
mineshaft. His training for work is in his language. Young Bill gets in trouble from his
mother at breakfast. He gives his father 'a grin and a look as much to say, "You know,
Dad".' Annie sees the nonverbal interaction between her son and his father but is too
busy to try to translate what is going on. Bill says his wife usually, unsuccessfully, tries
to translate their 'looks and smiles and winks'(p. 196).
Later in the afternoon, young Bill is building a 'little gold mine in the backyard with
tobacco-tins for vats and poppets made with his meccano set and dumps and little roads
all over the place'. Bill gets caught up in his son's project and helps him with change
rooms and a fitting shop. Young Bill says repeatedly to his father, 'Make us underground,
too. Make us underground too.' Bill explains how the mechanics of the underground
works: the shafts, the winzes and the rise. Getting caught up in young Bill's enthusiasm.
Bill draws a map of the mine on the fence (p.223-4). Bill temporarily forgets about
47
Mace and Don ' s illnesses and the dangers and futility he faces in his own life in the mine
everyday.
An argument develops between Annie and Bill over young Bill 's future. Annie suggests
teaching him about the mine is regressive. Annie hopes Bill has higher aspirations for
their son than for him to be a mineworker. Bill knows a life in the mine is not something
he would want for his 'nipper' , but he is resigned to knowing that his mother 's 'big ideas
won ' t keep him off the end of a banjo [shovel]' if that is what he is suited to (p.224).
Annie complains about her son being adversely influenced by 'playing mines' with his
father. The future damage and limited options for her son are already set in linguistic
concrete. The paradoxical effect is imposed through emotional grooming. The stricture is
in the nonverbal communication between young Bill and his father around the kitchen
table. 'Playing mines' in the backyard, the son secures his gender identity and anchors his
masculinity to the concept of work. Bill, in a rare moment, has his life validated by his
son's emulation of it. In the two small dramas involving young Bill, the inner experience
of expressing feelings and communicating nonverbally in the kitchen, and the outer
experience of constructing both a 'play mine' and his masculinity occur simultaneously
for the child of the blue-collar working class.
Mace and his son, Dick, represent a hopeless outcome that some working-class sons face
as a consequence of their relationships with their fathers. Mace's relationship with Dick
epitomises the silences and the decline of the relationships between fathers and sons.
48
Mace, having spent thirty years in the mine, is dying of emphysema. He breathes in
'strangled gasps' and his skin is 'putty coloured'. To Bill, Mace is transparent in places,
and Bill is repulsed by Mace's physical presence. He jumps back from Mace as though
'he was a leper'. As Mace approaches death he is forced out of the mine and is replaced
by his son, Dick, who 'started bogging on the twelve'(p.204).
Nick Donaldson in Time of our lives reflects on his own childhood. His intrigue with the
men in the factory is similar to the experience of Mace and Dick, and Bill and young Bill.
Emulating the men you look up to and then being betrayed by the empty future that
awaits is a knot many working class males spend their lives trying to unravel. For those
who want to escape their father's 'factory' experiences, the consequences are often
estrangement from the father who withdraws from the son due to perceived disloyalty.
Isolation is the price some sons pay for freedom.
Barry Hill captures the destructive nonverbal relationships between fathers and sons in
'Headlocks'. Hill's allegory shows the capacity for father-son relationships to be
psychic, physical, emotional, spiritual and destructive. The story begins with the father
bringing a fellow recreational fishermen home after fishing. In the family home, the
visitor, Ed, starts to playfully wrestle the son, Greg. Suddenly, during the wrestling the
father comes in and pins Ed to the floor. Greg, in a sudden shift in the story smashes-in
Ed's head with an ashtray, killing him. The first sign of communication by the father to
Greg in the fight is when Greg 'knew the old man was watching so there was no need to
turn around' (p. 13). The intra-personal knowledges shared between the father and son in
49
this passage operate psychically. Later, the father says to his wife, 'Let them go' (p. 15).
The tone in his voice is a further sign to Greg—he knew what was going to happen next.
The timing of the physical action of the son and the father's interception in the fight is
synchronised. The story ends with Greg and his father laughing together as they burn
Ed's body in the garage. The power of a father's influence over a son in his formative
years is portrayed with graphic detail and macabre consequences.
'Headlocks', as an allegory, shows the willingness of the son to follow the destructive
influence of the father. The son's loyalty and eagerness to belong effortlessly subjugates
his morality. Hill's story is also young Bill, Dick and Oliver's story. Less graphic though
equally poignant is the headlock working for wages and mortgages and debt a bourgeois
culture imposes on young working-class men.
The character Oliver in the Dyehouse represents a crucial stage in the production of
working-class culture. He is articulate, informed, a rebel and in love. He stands on the
threshold of manhood and marriage, an angst-ridden period between freedom and a life of
bondage for working-class men. He is young. He thinks he is different yet Oliver too may
find himself one day 'aching to smash her' (Casey 1942, p. 197), or looking 'at her and
[feeling] nothing but hatred' (Collins 1966, p. 171) as the years of bondage mount.
He is older than young Bill, but he is younger than the other working-class men
discussed. Oliver has learnt the same working-class code of communication as young
Bill, but he has not been working long enough to become ineffective in communicating
50
outside the workplace as have Hughie, Nick and Bill. Oliver appears to have the
knowledge to prevent the same thing happening to him. Despite this he falls in love with
Patty and is prepared to sacrifice his politics for love.
Oliver who looks with pity and disgust at Hughie sees his inevitable future within
Hughie. Oliver struggles against Hughie's capitulation to management, his meekness and
inability to stand up for himself Oliver knows that a wife and a mortgage can strangle a
man's independence and keep him quiet at work. As he says, 'They won't get me ... I'll
take the track first' (p.l21) rather than 'end up like Hughie'(p.l23).
Oliver philosophises to Patty,
you start taking out some little Sheila, and the next thing you know she's
got a mortgage on your future. Head down and arse up for the rest of your
days. I 'm not going to stay bogged down in this hole all my life ... I 'm
going to branch out (Calthorpe 1961, pp.53, 104).
However, Oliver does not follow his own advice. He is all talk. The nexus for
transformation in Oliver from rebel to willing worker is through his love and relationship
with Patty. Work is romanticised as a symbol of love. Oliver wants to settle down with
Patty. He says:
51
'You love me, Patty?' His arms tighten around her. He says, 'When can
we get married. I'd like to have a lot to give you, Patty. A new house in
one of the outer suburbs. Lovely clothes. We haven't got much. All our
lives we'll be working and just trying to hang on to what we have. Blokes
with money will make more and more. People like us will make it for
them. And all the time we'll be lucky if we can hang on. "We'll have each
other," Patty said. Oliver bent over and kissed her (pp.196, 201).
Oliver is articulate and can express his feelings of love for Patty. His eyes are open and
he can speak of the bleak future marriage and a mortgage can create to a workingman
should he get married. He expresses his insightful thoughts and feelings about bourgeois
society. But Oliver is in love. This is a time when the masculine is reunited with the
feminine after they separated in the oedipal phase of childhood. The anima and the
animus get it on. Love causes a workingmen to romanticise in his perception of work.
Oliver has someone to work for. His willingness to work in oppression becomes a symbol
of his love and his masculinity. This is a battle he wants to engage in.
52
When Men Are Old
Bill, Hughie, Nick, Mace and the other men have had a lifetime in the battle of work.
Oliver, in romanticising the purpose of work, uses it to express his love and masculinity,
as the other men once did. Their romanticising has long disappeared, although Bill briefly
revisits this illusion through helping his son build a 'play gold mine' in the backyard.
The young men and the older men differ in their communication. Oliver is articulate, as
were Bill and Hughie in their younger days. Nick, before he arrived in Mt Irene, was
articulate about his thoughts and feelings. Bill concedes that in the early part of the
marriage they 'talked half the night and let each other know things you could never find
words for in the daytime ... we'd say what was inside us' (p.238). Hughie, reminiscing
about his early years of marriage, says, 'I used to go home and tell Alice about how I
worked out a new colour. And old Mr Thompson used to stop and ask questions about the
lab' (p.71). Nick, Julie said, 'was different'. His working life in Mount Irene has
changed him. When the men in the different narratives are young as Oliver is, they are
articulate. With the intervening years of work these same men, who are now older, by
their own admission are, less communicative, frustrated and often silent. When men start
their working life they can communicate. By the time they finish their working life they
can't. Work shapes, makes and breaks things—language is one of them. Men's language
is structured around the noise, the danger, the lighting, and rules of not talking during
working hours. Men's intimacy is shaped and moulded around these strictures. The
effective nonverbal communication used at work is ineffective outside of work.
53
The stories, working as allegories, highlight the effect work has on men. Mace's life and
his relationship with his son, Dick, best reveal the dead end aspects of working-class
culture. Bill reflects that 'in the ensuing years ... there was so much time between now
and last time I'd spoken that I knew I could never fill it in. I'd grown new ways of
thinking and so had she' (p.238). Hughie couldn't talk at home or at work. His wife
instinctively knew to press her lips together (p.86), knowing communication didn't work.
Nick oppressed and rejected his wife in the face of his unemployment and personal
demise. Hughie, also faced with unemployment, kills himself. Nick can't communicate
his feelings and frustrations and his life becomes tormented. Bill says the words are not in
him to talk anymore, and loneliness causes him to suffer a living death.
Komarovsky's research show that a number of factors contribute to the isolation of the
older working-class male. Few older blue-collar workingmen appear intimately involved
in their married children's lives, and there is a relatively high frequency of hostile sons
and daughters (p.256). The more-common unsatisfactory relationships in the extended
families in working-class cultures are between the husband and his father (p.257).
Compounding this are the duel occurrences of the non-involvement of fathers in child
rearing and the difficulty experienced by less-educated men in communication, both of
which hinder the development of close personal relationships (p.258). Work can and does
play a major role for many men in breaking the communication cycle between work and
home. The intimacies shared at work by men are vital survival relationships, a rich source
of life but a formula for alienation outside work.
54
The shaping of the unsuspecting, young Bill and the romantic notions of Oliver come to a
halt in the more mature characters Bill, Hughie and Nick. The demise of Mace and
Hughie, and the loneliness of Bill and Nick make the end of their lives irreconcilable with
their beginnings. Although not all workingmen have this ending, a considerable
percentage of men find, in their twilight years, alienation and loneliness.
The experiences of the working-class characters in these fictional narratives are refiected
in sociological research, validating, in varying degrees, the legitimate struggle of blue-
collar workingmen's lives. The stories of working people in literature have the potential
to create a more reflective working-class culture if they were read.
55
CONCLUSION
Through exploring the literary characters in these working-class narratives, I hope to
have shed light on the complexity of the emotional life of workingmen. Work structures
feelings and communication through noise, danger, lighting, isolation, and not being
allowed or able to talk effectively at work. The successful paralanguage practiced at work
breaks down when it is duplicated at home. Even though the family's language and
communication are a reflection, linguistically and hierarchically, of work the family is in
the embryo stage compared to the fathers development and the siblings and wife still
have considerable interaction outside of the home.
Work is seminal in structuring a workingman's feelings. The solidarity and intimacy of
mateship is a key component of work. The experience shared at work by men can range
from the fear of death to the fear of obscurity. This experience of fear is shared and the
unity in the oppression creates a depth of feeling experienced instinctively.
The feelings that compensate men's fear are a conditional love and caring for each other.
In qualifying that statement I would add the following two points. Firstly, at times a
corresponding hatred may flare up among men, with aggressive and abusive behaviour
being perpetrated on the more vulnerable men and the apprentices in the work place.
Secondly using the word love to describe the relationship between workingmen is a term
men would reject in our culture. Mateship best describes the conditional relationship
between men at work. However, 'mates' seems an inadequate term for men who risk their
health and wellbeing for each other. Clearly, they are more than acquaintances, more than
56
pub mates. The similarities between work and the family can be found in the binary
relationship of love and hate. Work, like a family, can be a man's strength and poison.
The mateship at work is a self-serving, though not selfish, conditional love, created
through the need to survive.
Workingmen think that only someone working with them can understand them. A
consequence of work shaping men's feelings, and the communication structure that
expresses those feelings, is that men become progressively alienated and isolated in
familial relationships. They often feel trapped, inadequate and misunderstood. It follows
that working-class children, growing up with a specific dialect, have more difficulty
communicating outside their culture than middle-class children. The language of
educational institutions is that of the middle-class and is not working class friendly,
academically or socially.
Despite the postmodern view of classlessness and fragmentation, there exists a strong
working-class culture in our society today. It is found in the language and in the structure
of feelings. Norman Mailer said, 'Being a man is the continuing battle of one's life'. The
struggle against self is a middle-class luxury. A worker aims to achieve security in his
employment and earn enough money to survive. The odds are stacked heavily against
him having a fair fight against employers and a demonising media. However, many
workingmen are resilient and know the battle of life more intimately than they know the
bourgeois battle of self
57
Arnold tried to emancipate the working class; my father (a boilermaker) told me
repeatedly, ' the working class doesn't want to be saved'. His sweeping statement is as
flawed as Arnold's was ignorant. This analysis is not about changing the creativity and
the solidarity of the working class, but rather, providing the tools for reflection needed to
alleviate the deeper feelings of alienation and loneliness that can occur. The solutions for
a better world for all must include the often-alienated older working class male. A
broader perception of working-class masculinity can maintain sensitivity to this rich,
deeply felt culture. Willing or not, blue-collar working-class culture is overdue for a life-
giving shift in how it sees itself For many workingman, the other is still the feminine and
education is not an option. There is little room to move in the perception workers have of
working-class masculinity. Few walk willingly into the unknown.
There are, although sparse, examples for workingmen to learn how to redefine
themselves. Redefining a working-class culture does not mean a media/image make over
or imitating middle-class sensitive new age men. Meaningful shifts need to be made in
the perception and the feelings of how and what it means to be a man. E.P. Thompson
said, the working class were present and participated in their making. Remaking the
working class is in our hands.
I hope this thesis has identified some of the problems and the richness in the relationships
in working-class culture, and can inform, give insights, and help better understand
ourselves.
58
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